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Pumpkin pie with maple cream

Pumpkin pie was a revelation to me. I had never tried it until a couple of years ago, when I decided to give it a go from scratch for a Thanksgiving meal. I loved it. The pastry is crisp, the filling is smooth and the sweet pumpkin is amazing paired with Christmas-y spices like cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. You can make pumpkin pie with pumpkin from a can, but it’s actually so easy to prepare fresh pumpkin…using a microwave. I came across that tip in a BBC Good Food recipe and it works perfectly. If you don’t have a microwave you could probably steam the pumpkin until soft, but a microwave is quick and simple.

The pastry for this pie needs to be blind baked – baked without any filling – which keeps it crisp even once the wet filling has gone in. You can use proper ceramic baking beans for this, if you have them, but any sort of dried bean will do the job just as well, as will uncooked rice. Just don’t try to cook and eat the beans or rice after you’ve used them for blind baking!Ingredients
700g piece of pumpkin
Sweet short crust read-to-roll pastry
150ml double cream
150g light brown muscavado sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
Grating of whole nutmeg
2 eggs

150ml double cream
1 tbsp maple syrup

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/ Gas Mark 6. Cut the skin off the pumpkin using a very sharp knife and chop into large chunks. Place in a microwaveable bowl and cover with cling film. Microwave for about 15 minutes until the pumpkin is soft. Drain away any water and leave aside to cool.
2. Roll the pastry out so it’s a little bit bigger than your pie dish. Lift carefully, with the help of your rolling pin (/wine bottle), onto the pie dish. Gently coax the pastry into the dish, and press into all the edges. Leave some of the pastry overhanging the tin – you can cut this away to neaten up the pie after baking the case. Short crust pastry, and in particular sweet short pastry, can be tricky to work with as it breaks easily. First of all, make sure everything is cold – the pastry, your hands, even fling open the windows to chill the room down. Secondly, don’t panic if the pastry rips because it can easily be patched up with some excess pastry (as you can see in my pictures!). Once the filling is in no one will ever know…
3. Line the pastry with foil, baking parchment or cling film and then fill with ceramic baking beans, dried beans or even rice.
Bake for 20 minutes and then remove the baking beans and bake for a further 10 minutes without anything on the pastry until it’s a nice golden brown colour. Now you can neaten up the edges of the pie with a sharp knife.
4. Blend together the pumpkin, double cream, sugar, spices and eggs.
5. Turn the oven down to 160C/140C fan/Gas Mark 3. Pour the filling mixture into the pastry case and bake for about an hour. The filling might puff up a little, but will fall back down when it cools.
6. Whip the rest of the double cream with the maple syrup.
Pumpkin pie is great both hot and cold. Serve with the maple cream, or some vanilla ice cream if you prefer while the pie is hot.